Vim Syntax Highlighting does not work

Question

I've installed a fresh Arch Linux system on my laptop and downloaded the vim package.

I haven't altered the .vimrc file, but the syntax highlighting doesn't seem to work with any of the languages I tried (Python, Ruby, CSharp, C...).

Auto formatting (gg, =, G) also fails.

Until now when playing with vim (because I can't really say I've extensively used it) in other OSs (Ubuntu, Fedora), the syntax highlighting came on automatically. Is there something I am missing here?

Answer 1

You need to have following settings in .vimrc file as per arch linux documentation

filetype plugin on
syntax on

Answer 2

This is the absolute minimum you need to put in your ~/.vimrc if you intend to use vim as your primary editor:

" activates filetype detection
filetype plugin indent on

" activates syntax highlighting among other things
syntax on

" allows you to deal with multiple unsaved
" buffers simultaneously without resorting
" to misusing tabs
set hidden

" just hit backspace without this one and
" see for yourself
set backspace=indent,eol,start

Anything else depends on your taste, workflow and needs.

Answer 3

vi /etc/profile
alias vi=vim

maybe you use vi instead of vim

Answer 4

I had this problem in Opensuse Leap 42.2 cloud. And solved it by installing vim-data

sudo zypper install vim-data

or just re-installing vim will include vim-data automatically.

sudo zypper remove vim
sudo zypper install vim

Answer 5

Type

:syntax on

to get it to work. It is not a default option for vim. Probably in the other systems, it was set to on in the system default vimrc

Or put

syntax on

in ~/.vimrc

Answer 6

Another reason syntax highlighting won't work is you might have a theme/colorscheme set that VIM cannot find.

colorscheme darkblue

Either delete the line or comment it out:

"colorscheme darkblue

Answer 7

I had a similar problem. I could not have syntax highlighting on. I also found that gvim launched without pulldown menus or toolbar icons. It turned out I did not have the vim-runtime package properly installed. In my case I was on debian jessie with a large set of files missing under /usr/share/vim/vim74/ directory.

$ ls /usr/share/vim/vim74/
debian.vim  doc/  rgb.txt

The solution was to run:

$ sudo aptitude reinstall vim-runtime

That fixed the problem for me, for syntax highlighting and for missing menus/icons in gvim. I'm not sure why my system was in this state, but the reinstall of the above package solved both issues.

Answer 8

in my case , I changed the term(terminal type) from vt100 to xterm. And it works.

To change the terminal type:

in bash:

export TERM=xterm

in bourne shell or ksh:

TERM=xterm
export TERM

in csh or tcsh:

setenv TERM xterm

Answer 9

On my Ubuntu 18.04 system i.e. c-highlighting works but Icinga2 config file highlighting being provided by the vim-icinga2 package does not. Quote from https://packages.debian.org/sid/vim-icinga2:

As per the Debian vim policy, installed addons are not activated automatically, but the "vim-addon-manager" tool can be used for this purpose.

Executing vim-addon-manager -w install icinga2 following a regular vim-icinga2 package installation solved the issue. The -w option forces a system wide rather than a just per current user activation. Notice that executing vim-addon-manager without arguments yields a list of 39 modes being disabled by default:

> vim-addon-manager
# Name                     User Status  System Status 
align                       removed       removed       
alternate                   removed       removed       
                        ...
icinga2                     removed       installed    # Due to above command
                        ...

If you do miss highlighting chances are your mode is among this list.

NB: Ubuntu 18.04 seemingly inherits Debian's policy. None of the above answers solved my issue. No ~/.vimrc configuration or manual activation was being required after the above described activation.